Posted on 08 September 2012

We‘ve seen how tablets tablets are becoming a lot more popular among the general population and new models, like the Kindle Fire are getting a lot of attention. Tablet PCs have actually had a run that is similar to smartphones. Previously a business tool that was used only by a segment of the population, they have now fallen into mainstream consumer devices, with all classes of people having an interest in owning one.

There are, of course, several different models of them on the market today, so if you want a comparison of their features and specifications, there is plenty of free information to look at. But as marketers and online entrepreneurs, what interests us mainly is the online money making opportunities that come from these devices. Actually, there are several ways that you can make money off the surge in popularity of tablets. Here are some of them:

Selling the devices themselves

If you look at eBay, for example, you will find that there is a large selection of tablets available, sometimes at prices that are better than what you would pay if you go through the official channels like in an Apple store. There is also a growing market for refurbished or used devices, as plenty of consumers would like to get a tablet, without paying the full price for a new one.

To profit from these, all you need is to find a source that can supply the devices at a low price and then you can resell them online (or even offline if you want) at a profit. There are now businesses which make money by buying back damaged tablets, fixing them and then selling them again as refurbished to budget conscious consumers.

Selling accessories and parts

Now that there is a bigger demand for tablets, there is also a bigger demand for items that are related to these devices. All kinds of cases and skins are now being sold to owners of tablet PCs. There is also a market for other aftermarket accessories like wall chargers, USB cables, innovative charging devices that let someone recharge their mobile device by using solar power and more.

Finally, just like with PC parts, we have tablet parts that are being sold, which are often bought by independent repair technicians, as well as some individual consumers that want to try and fix the device themselves after the warranty runs out. Most common parts that sell well online include replacement screens and batteries. Again, the simple concept of buying low and selling high applies. You check which items are in demand, find a good supplier that provides them at a lower price and then resell them at a profit through online marketplaces or an e-commerce site that you’ve put together.

There are a few other ways we can make money from tablet PCs. Check back tomorrow for a few other ideas that could let you make some money.

Posted on 13 June 2012

Having a page on Facebook for a business or product is obviously the first step to take when leveraging the potential of social networking. Then comes getting people to subscribe to the page. But in order for a page to be useful as a marketing platform, the posts will need to be seen by a good portion of the subscribers.

The standard way of determining who gets to see your updates and posts in their news feed is by using the Facebook EdgeRank which aims to deliver to the user content that is the most relevant to them based on their interests and activity on the site. But for businesses that have just gotten started with Facebook marketing, this may make it a bit difficult for them to get the kind of exposure that they want. It needs to be remembered that few users will manually check for updates on the fan pages that they’re subscribed to.

The promoted post is the answer to this. When you make a post to your Facebook page, you will have the opportunity to promote your post and make it appear in the news feed or a larger percentage of your users. This gives the post a better “reach”. Obviously, the more users that see the post, the more effective it will be at promoting your business. Users who otherwise may not have even known that the post existed would see it and can potentially take action on it if they like what they see. This takes them to your page where they can see the other posts they’ve missed, where there is also a chance that they will take action such as clicking a link that goes to part of your website.

Another, less expensive advertising solution which is common on sites like eBay and classified ads websites is to highlight your story in the users news feed. More attention is drawn to it and therefore the user is more likely to notice it, then take an action if they want to explore the post further because they found it interesting or relevant.

There is also a solution for businesses who want get more “Likes” on their page. Again, it is based on an existing concept. When the Facebook friend of a user likes a certain page or otherwise interacts with it such as by posting a comment, the update can be displayed in the news feed. However, it is not always too visible.

Sponsored stories is the solution to that problem. Now, more users will be able to see when one of their friends interacted with your page. You can also control your spending better, by specifying an “Objective” for your sponsored story, such as showing this to users that are the most likely to like your page or the most likely to click on your sponsored story to check it out.

Posted on 11 June 2012

If you look at the major players in the online world, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay (with their PayPal system), you will see that despite their different offerings they do have one thing in common. No it’s not their popularity, but rather the fact that they either have a mobile payment solution ready or they are seriously considering to develop one. Of course, it’s not only the big players in the online world that want some of the action. Banks and financial institutions, as well as mobile phone carriers are all trying to put something out. And of course there is the smaller start ups that hope to achieve popularity but that few have ever heard of.

But there is one company that has put out a unique concept for a mobile wallet solution: Apple. A new app has been released called the Passbook. What makes it different (at least for now) is that it doesn’t yet have the functionality to make payments with the iPhone at a point of sale, but rather it functions as a kind of virtual wallet, allowing the user to hold event & movie tickets, coupons, boarding passes, transportation tickets, gift cards, vouchers, points & rewards cards, etc. When a user is present at a participating retailer, the card can be brought up on the screen and scanned.

The app also combines the feature of location detection, showing the relevant card when a user is near or at a participating merchant. This concept has already been adopted by some merchants and more are expected to follow. But the main question remains here: when will Apple integrate full payment functionality into the app?

For now, in the United States, payment systems that are fully integrated with mobile devices are still something a bit “futuristic” and aren’t expected to reach a mainstream status until 2016 or later. Some merchants have began to upgrade their systems and infrastructure, but those who accept mobile payments are still in the minority for now.

Another issue is: will Apple be able to dominate the market? It is in the lead with the most popular smart phone and the most popular tablet PC. However, Android based hardware and devices are not far behind at the moment. There are some who believe that there will be two or more mobile payment solutions that will be popular in the next few years. They will all function on the same principle: the user presents their smart phone, where an app generates a secure, one use only bar code that is scanned, allowing the purchase to be charged to the user’s credit card, or deducted from an online wallet account that has been filled up in another way (bank transfers, payments received from businesses, person to person payments, etc.). Apple seems like a trusted solution however it is still not known how much of the market they will be able to corner in the payments industry, as this is something the company doesn’t have too much experience with for now.

Posted on 12 May 2012

We’ve seen two good tips to help build a good online business yesterday. There are more that you can use. These are all strategies that are used by some of the most successful names in online business. They aren’t specific to a particular subset of online business, so you can use them whether you own content websites, are selling items on eBay, are an affiliate, etc.

Do everything possible to work smarter and not harder

In the online world, most businesses don’t demand “hard” work in the sense that you would constantly need to solve complex problems. However, in many cases it is simply a large quantity of seemingly very simple work that keeps people from achieving their goals. For example, if you’re promoting a dozen different affiliate offers using different advertising channels, you may need to build over 30 separate landing pages for them, complete with graphics, unique text content and other elements. Not particularly difficult, but can become quite tedious. A lot of people lose their motivation if they spend hours performing the same tasks over and over.

The solution to this is actually quite simple. First, find and use any tools that you can use to automate processes in your business. There are scripts, programs, apps, etc. which can save you a lot of time and reduce the amount of tedious work you need to do. For example, there are programs which can submit articles to directories automatically.

You may also want to outsource some parts of your business to others, such as content creation, graphic design, etc. This may reduce your profits, however the time that you gain will keep your more motivated and can be used to search for more business opportunities, thus making you more money in the long run.

Keep track of how your different businesses are doing

If you own several online businesses that are in different niches, you should ensure that you’re keeping an eye on all of them. This will allow you to constantly monitor your performance and make adjustments if necessary, even for businesses that run on “autopilot”.

Keep up new developments

There are two kinds of developments that you should keep up with: those that are related to online marketing in general and those which are more specific to your niche of products or to the type of business that you run.

Be sure to read any emails that you get from partners, such as affiliate programs. They may contain important information about upcoming changes that could have an effect on how you earn online. Read some posts on online marketing forums. Also, check out websites which specialize in aggregating news related to online business. You don’t have to spend too much time on this, just a few minutes a day to scan the headlines or new posts, then take a bit of time to read something that you find interesting.

Posted on 15 November 2011

If you have a website of any kind, then you probably use it to either sell or promote some of your products. One of your main concerns as a webmaster would be how to make the user experience more enjoyable for your website visitors. Also, you are probably looking for ways that you can use to improve your overall search engine ranking for the keywords that your website is targeting. Both of these things can be achieved by allowing user interaction with your website. This is not something unique or radical, in fact many of the world’s biggest websites such as Amazon and eBay follow these tips, so learn from the successful guys and implement them.

Allow User Ratings on Your Items

If you sell merchandise, allowing your users to give a rating, usually in terms of stars, can be a very good way to have them interact with your website and give feedback on products and services that you have and that they have used. Unless you deliberately sell junk and don’t really want your customers to come back to your site (well… they might kind of complain and this annoys scammers, you know), then there should be no problem with letting your site visitors rate your products.

Allow Comments, Reviews and Testimonials From Users and Encourage them to Participate

This is good for SEO, as it creates unique content which is user generated, so you didn’t really need to take any action in order to put it there anyways. So it saves a lot of effort for you. Are you selling some products? Let buyers post some reviews of them. Many big name shopping sites do that, such as Amazon. Did you post a news article, blog post or made a YouTube video for your website visitors? Let them comment about it and encourage them to leave feedback, by using a call to action such as “What Do You Think of This New Service? Let Us Know Below!”. Monitor your comments to delete spam and obvious trolling or stupidity, but also keep an eye out for visitors that have a question or concern. You can then either respond to them in the comments, or ask them to communicate with you in a private way such as by email or by sending a message through your website.

Include Social Media Buttons

This really isn’t complicated at all. All you need to do is include buttons for social media, such as your Twitter and Facebook profiles, or your YouTube channel. You can incorporate these to your website very easily and many large companies and even government agencies now have them on their sites due to the prevalent use of social networking sites. You also don’t have to use the icons provided by the social networking sites, instead you can use custom ones that would better match the layout of your website. Of course, you could always download the trial edition of Photoshop and design the logos yourself too. Social media buttons will allow your visitors to get social with you on various networks that your business participates in.

Posted on 17 August 2011

One term that is often mentioned when it comes to online business is “passive income”. However, many newcomers to the industry do not really understand what it means or why you should work to create such a source of income for you. While the definitions will vary somewhat, passive income for me would mean income that will come to you without you having to make ongoing efforts to get it. Too many people get discouraged when it comes to operating their own online business for one main reason : it takes too much work. After all, who wants to trade a $15 an hour job to make $15 an hour online, even if you are working for yourself. Furthermore, nobody wants to spend their entire day in front of the computer to run their business.

There are many ways to make money online, some of which require more interaction from you on a regular basis, some less. Let’s explore some of the ways that you can create an online business that will not require you to spend 10 hours a day in front of your computer.

Creating your own product

Of course, creating an information product and selling it will require a lot of time and effort in the beginning. However, once the product is created and you have sent some traffic to it, the amount of work that you need to devote to it will diminish as well. This is even more so when you have affiliates that are promoting your product. They will be the ones who will work to create advertising campaigns and get some sales for you, while you can simply sit back and spend an hour or so every day checking your stats and making sure that everything is going ok.

Selling on eBay

While many would say that selling on eBay is not a “passive income” activity, it all comes down to what you sell and how you do things. Let’s say that you have found a product that is very popular and that you can sell for a $50 profit on eBay. If you get just 2 sales a day, that will mean $100 a day of profit. To allow this to happen, all that you need to do is to work with a drop shipper. The buyer pays for the item. You then place an order with the drop shipper and tell them to ship the item to the client. The deal is done. All you would need to do is to place the orders as necessary and also place new listings. All of this would take you less than an hour a day on average and can bring you very nice profits with little effort. For you to make this work, you would just need to spend some time at the beginning finding a product that is in demand and that can be shipped to your buyers by a supplier which does drop shipping.

Posted on 27 July 2011

Now that we have explored some ways to find dropshippers, let’s take a closer look at how you can evaluate a particular supplier to see whether they are legit or not. Here are some of the things to watch out for when you are looking at a dropshipper. These are not conclusive proof that the supplier is just another scammer, but should be seen as red flags telling you to proceed with extreme caution.

A recent join date and low amount of feedback from clients

Many dropshipping sites and some online marketing forums have a feedback system that will allow people to leave feedback for each other after completing a transaction. You will also be able to see exactly when somebody became a member of the site.

One thing to watch out for is a member who has recently joined and has no or little feedback on the site. Scammers frequently create new accounts after they begin receiving negatives from clients that they scammed or get banned from the site. Also, don’t let the fact that they’ve completed a few transactions fool you into thinking they must be legit. Some will complete a few transactions successfully at the beginning to build up their “reputation” on the site and then when they see people are starting to trust them, they will simply turn to scamming.

Insisting on paying using methods such as Western Union or bank wire

It is true that in some countries where suppliers are based it is not possible or practical to use a payment processor such as PayPal or Moneybookers. However you should be careful about using one that insists on being paid with a method that is not reversible such as by Western Union or Money Gram. Even bank wires are not really safe, as banks in foreign countries will seldom want to help you in the event that you’ve wired a few hundred dollars to a scammer. If possible, make use of escrow facilities that will sometimes be advertised on dropshipping sites. However, here again check to see if the escrow service is legitimate too, as some fake ones have been spotted.

Offering items at prices that seem too low

Well if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is. If you see that a supplier is offering merchandise at prices that are far below what others charge for the same item in the same quantity, then you need to ask yourself some serious questions about them. Most probably, the deal is not legitimate and even if they do send something, it may be merchandise that was stolen or is counterfeit.

Not providing contact details

If you are going to do some high volume business with a dropshipper, then you should at least have their phone number in case you need to call them if there is a problem with one of your orders. A supplier that doesn’t want to provide one should look instantly suspicious to you.

Posted on 26 July 2011

Previously, we have seen some tips on how you can test the dropshipper that you intend to use and the fact that it is much better to have more than one dropshipper to do business with. But how do you find a good dropshipper? There are a few ways to do this. Here are some of them:

Look through dropshipping websites

There are some website out there such as DH Gate, TradeTang and Alibaba that are a real treasure trove for all kinds of merchandise. Anything like clothing, electronics and jewelry can be found there. The good thing about these sites is that they are mostly aimed at business owners who are looking to acquire merchandise rather than at individual consumers. This means that you can easily find dropshippers or buy merchandise in bulk. This is the good thing. But the bad thing about these sites is that they also contain many scammers who will either rip you off and not send anything, or ship something different than what they advertise.

But there are ways to protect yourself from that. Obviously, you can apply what we covered in the previous article which would be to make a test order first to see if they deliver. But you should also check the seller’s feedback on the site. See how long they have been active and how many positive comments they have from others who have done business with them. Also, look to see whether they have a website and phone number. While this is not a guarantee of safety, it does make it more likely that you will be dealing with a legitimate supplier rather than a scammer. If possible pay with PayPal or a credit card and avoid sending money through Western Union or Money Gram, as these services are preferred by scammers due to the fact that the transaction cannot be reversed.

Look at internet marketing forums

Most “make money online” forums will have a section that is dedicated to eBay selling or dropshipping. Check it out to see what others are saying. You may find the contact information for some good suppliers, complete with comments from forum members who have used them and were happy with their transaction. You might even find some members of the forum who are suppliers for a wide variety of merchandise and who can drop ship to your eBay buyers.

Dealing with someone from a forum can be safer than dealing with a seller on Alibaba, as the supplier will often be well known in the forum and have members who can vouch for him. But this is not a guarantee that everything will go well. Don’t forget to use common sense when you are looking for a dropshipper, no matter where you find him. Always try to check their reputation out before you decide to use them as a supplier for your eBay online business. If you are careful, then you will reduce the chances of getting scammed when doing business with one.

Posted on 25 July 2011

If you are going to be dropshipping and selling items on eBay, then you need to be really careful as to the dropshipper that you choose. Selecting the wrong one could rapidly ruin your reputation and cause untold problems. Even if the dropshipper that you are looking at claims to have the products that you want to sell to your buyers at great prices, there is still more that you need to do in order to be sure they will be able to deliver. Here are some tips to avoid any problems when dropshipping on eBay:

First, start out slowly

When they notice an opportunity to make money online by selling things or by any other means, a lot of people go all in from the very beginning. This might be good in some cases, but with eBay selling this is not the best idea that you could go with. Why is that? After all, isn’t it good to make as much money as fast as you can? You can always try, but if you later find out that you have chosen the wrong supplier for your products, then you have just created a big mess for yourself.

What is a better way to get started? Actually, it’s simple: first make a test order for yourself. Buy one of the products and have the dropshipper send it over to you. You will then be able to see whether you have received the right item in the right condition and whether you have received it within the specified time frame. If you want to be even safer and make sure that the supplier will perform just as well when shipping things to your clients, then you can always list just 1 or 2 items for sale and then see if your buyers have received the item and were satisfied with it. In this scenario, in the worst case you would simply refund your buyers if they did not receive the item as promised or if they didn’t get exactly what you put up for sale.

Once you have determined that the supplier for the goods that you are selling is reliable, you can then start doing business at full scale with them.

Try to find more than one dropshipper for your items

This will serve as a good backup in case one of your suppliers experiences problems or has run out of the items that you normally sell. It is much better to do business with more than one supplier, as your own business will not be disrupted too severely if you can’t use one of them anymore. Being in a situation where you have lost one of your suppliers and need to scramble to find another one is not good, as very often sellers fail to do their due diligence in this case and will choose a replacement without even bothering to check their reputation and whether they are any good.

Posted on 23 July 2011

One main part of succeeding as an eBay seller would be to keep your buyers happy and satisfied with the products that you offer as well as the service you give them. Now how do you do that? There are a few simple ways to accomplish this.

Provide a Good Item Description

Many, if not the majority of, cases of customers being unhappy with what they purchased on eBay arises from the fact that they either misunderstood the item description or it wasn’t clear enough. This is a common source of conflicts between buyers and sellers, but it can be avoided relatively easily. Here is how:

Upload clear pictures of the item

Avoid using stock photos. It is much better to put up pictures of the item that you are selling that you took yourself. A cheap digital camera or a cell phone cam will do. If applicable, take pictures of the product, as well as everything that will come with it such as accessories, etc. This will give the buyer a clear idea of what they will be receiving.

Describe the condition of the item accurately

If the item is brand new and in the box, then obviously it can be sold as “new”. Don’t try to pass off a refurbished item as a new one, as it simply is not. There are times where you need to open the box and use the item to test it or to prepare it for sale. One common example is a cell phone that you’ve unlocked with software. Obviously, you need to take it out of the box and use it for that to happen. While it is still a “new” item, you should include that in the description. Most buyers won’t mind and actually understand the logic behind this. However, if you don’t mention this you may very well one day end up with a buyer leaving negative feedback and saying “OMMGGGG!!!!! the seller said it was brand new but there was a fingerprint on the side of the phone and a spec of dust on the screen! Liar! Thief!!!”

If there is some damage to the item or something missing, mention that

If the item that you are selling does not come with items that would normally be necessary or at least useful to operate it, then you should let the buyers know in your description. For example, selling a laptop without a power cord or a gaming console without its controllers. Make sure that this is mentioned in a clear and visible way in your description.

Also, if you are selling an item that has some damage to it or is not fully functional, then you need to advise buyers of this as well. For example, if you are selling an iPhone that has a broken screen (many buyers get these to part them out or to repair them), then make sure your listing says in big bold letters that the screen doesn’t work.

Posted on 28 June 2011

When looking at full time online business opportunities, many people ask themselves whether affiliate marketing is a good thing to go into. While there is definitely a lot of money to be made in this business, it is not the most simple thing to set up. One of the reasons behind this is that you will have plenty of competitors who are going to be after the same kind of traffic that you are and pushing the exact same types of affiliate offers. So what do you require in order to become a good affiliate marketer and make a profitable business out of it? Here are certain things you will need:

Patience

While some people did make a few thousand in their first months, there is nothing guaranteeing that you will be able to emulate them. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer will take some time. First, you would need to make various efforts to make your business become profitable. Next, you would need to consider the fact that most affiliate programs pay you one month after the end of the current month, so it is not instant money like if you would be selling things on eBay or offering services. If you need to make some money right away, like cash to pay some bills, you can try a different business model for the time being and then move onto affiliate marketing later.

Money to invest

While it is possible to get started here with just a few dollars for a web hosting account, if you want your business to be successful, you will need to invest a lot of money into it. Some of the things that you may need to pay include: hosting, advertising as well as paying other people to do some tasks for you, such as creating landing pages or putting up ads if you don’t want to spend too much time doing these yourself.

Ability to stay on top of things

The world of internet marketing is one that is always changing. As such, there are new offers for you to promote, new networks for you to do business with, new advertising opportunities, etc. that appear regularly. If you want to maximize the amount of profit that your business will be making, then you will also need to spend some time scouting for new opportunities in addition to running your existing campaigns. This will require some good planning and time management on your part.

Having no fear of failure

There are many great methods to make money online, however no one will tell you the exact steps that you will need to take to build a successful affiliate campaign. This is something that you will need to figure out on your own. Along the may, it is very well possible that you will make mistakes. The important thing here is not to be afraid to try new things and to learn from your errors so that you can gain a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

Posted on 19 June 2011

If you want to start an online business and make a relatively decent amount of cash, without spending thousands of dollars or working full time on it, there are some ways to accomplish that. While there are many ways of earning money online, here are some examples of methods that have been shown to be profitable for many online entrepreneurs. These can be used to build a part time online business, however there is nothing that is really stopping you from turning these ideas into a full time online business if this is what you wish to do.

Providing services

We have seen this in the micro online business article, and it really is the same concept. You provide services that are useful for business owners and online marketers and you get paid for it. Popular examples include: article writing, backlink creation, web design, ebook writing, etc.

The main difference is that you will be spending more time doing the work, around 20 to 30 hours per week should give you a very good part time income.

Outsourced service creation

Same thing, but with a bit of a change. While you can do some of the work, you will be outsourcing most of it to other people for less than what the client is paying you and you will pocket the difference. So let’s say that someone pays you $12 to create a 1000 word article for them. You find a worker that can create quality articles on a forum or freelancing site and pay them let’s say $8 for it. You will then keep the $4 difference as profit. While this seems insignificant, if you get orders for 10 articles a day at $4 of profit, that’s $40 per day, and you didn’t do much work besides co-ordinating the work between what the client orders and what the outsourcer produces.

Light Ebay selling

Ebay is the most popular online marketplace in the world, where some sellers have made millions by selling various kinds of merchandise to consumers. Of course, it’s not easy to earn 7 figures from the site, but it is well possible to make a few dozen dollars per day from it with a bit of effort and investment.

Selling on Ebay is the electronic equivalent of you having a stand at a flea market. You buy goods from a distributor at a low price and then re-sell them at a profit to the end consumer. All you are doing is applying the concept of buy low/sell high, which has existed for thousands of years.

So, for example, you would buy 10 cell phones at $300 each from a distributor that sells wholesale goods. You then resell them on Ebay for $400 and you keep the difference minus Ebay and PayPal fees. Basically, to be successful, all you would need to do is to find goods that are easy to acquire, in demand and easy to sell at a profit.

Posted on 15 June 2011

There are a lot of people who want to earn some money on the internet. There are also plenty of guides, some free, some paid, which describe various ways to do so. The problem with these is that they often tend to take a “one size fits all” approach and make no difference between someone who just wants a few extra dollars to pay their bills or someone who wants to make a six figure income by building a complete online business.

Also, the issue is that these guides, courses and ebooks, while useful and interesting, tend to focus exclusively on one online money making activity, such as affiliate marketing, digital product creation or eBay selling. This, in itself, is not entirely a bad thing. After all, if someone wants to learn how to be a Power Seller on eBay and make thousands of dollars in sales each day, it would be much better for them to have a complete guide on the topic, rather than just reading a few pages in a more general money making ideas guide.

However, for those who do not yet know which specialty, or specialties of online money making they want to get into, this may not be the best choice. In that case, it would be much better for these people to read something that describes various ways to make money on the internet, so that they can choose which activities they would want to perform to earn.

Even though many individuals with no knowledge of online business wouldn’t know much about different money making activities, they typically know what their objectives are in terms of income. Some people only want to make a hundred or so dollars each month, while others want to make a thousand dollars each day.

There are basically three different categories of objectives in terms of income:

Micro online business: $0 to $500 a month.

This is for those who only want a few extra bucks at the end of the month, to do things like pay some bills, buy a few extra things that they want, etc. These people typically do not want to invest much time or money in their business and just want methods that will bring them a bit of cash without being too complex.

Part time online business: $500 to $2500 a month.

This is often used by people who want to supplement an existing income or those that are willing to put in a bit more effort in their online activities and spend about 15 to 30 hours a week on it. Some investments might be required, but they will usually be relatively small sums of money.

Full time online business: $2500 a month +

Here, things start getting serious. Those who have this objective need to know that they will essentially be building a complete online business and they must be willing to put in 30 or more hours per week into it, as well as make the necessary financial investments to get their business off the ground and to keep it growing.

We will keep exploring some money making ideas for each of these categories tomorrow.

Posted on 31 May 2011

There are many people who are new to internet marketing and the whole “make money online” scene and who naturally, have many questions about online earning opportunities. Here are some answers to questions that are frequently asked by newcomers.

How do I earn money online?

There are plenty of opportunities, which are quite varied. The most common earning opportunities found online are:

Becoming an affiliate of another merchant and getting a commission on sales that you get for them.

Creating a web site, then selling ad space and getting paid for each click on the ads, for the number of views they get, or a fixed amount per day, week or month.

Creating your own (digital or physical) product and selling it to customers.

Reselling someone else’s product through your website or a marketplace like eBay or Amazon (buy low/sell high concept, similar to what a physical retail store does).

How much money will I make? Are these ads that say I can make $1000 a day online true?

The amount of money you will earn will depend on what you do specifically. The earning potential is technically unlimited, but it will take a lot of work and dedication to reach good results. While some people can make $1000 a day, it will take much more than simply buying a product or signing up for some course to do the trick.

Are all of these guides/courses/ebooks/membership sites about making money scams?

Some of them are, but the majority can’t really be considered a scam. Rather, they do give you some ideas and information that you can put to good use and start an online business of your choice. However, most of them stop short of holding your hand to the point of telling you exactly what to sell, exactly how to word your ads, etc. This is something you will need to figure out on your own.

Do I need any startup money? Can I get started with nothing?

This depends on what you are trying to do to earn money. Some forms of online business can be started with absolutely $0, some others will require a small investment of $10 – $20 for a website and domain name, while others will need you to pay a few hundred or a few thousand for things like advertising, merchandise to re-sell, etc.

Where are the best places to find information on earning money online?

If you do a Google, search, you will find that there are quite a few websites or blogs that provide useful information, but make sure that they are not simply a “front” that is trying to sell you some guide or get you to join a membership site. The best sources of free information remain internet marketing forums such as Digital Point, Warrior Forum and Wicked Fire.